RAWALPINDI, Aug 4: A Water and Sanitation Agency (Wasa) team has started conducting raids in various localities to book those commercial consumers who have either registered themselves as domestic users or have acquired illegal connections, an official source told Dawn here on Monday.

The team, which has already started it drive against unregistered commercial consumers in Pirwadhai, was constituted in the backdrop of the alleged involvement of five billing officers of Wasa’s revenue branch in aiding commercial consumers to acquire domestic status or allowing them to use the utility free of charge.

These officers had allegedly been accepting illicit favours from such consumers as a result of which Wasa suffered a loss of Rs12 million per annum, the source said.

An inquiry committee has been constituted which is investigating the matter.

The team is being headed by Wasa’s director finance, who presents a report to the agency’s managing director, Aslam Ali Sabzwari, on daily basis.

“The raids are being conducted in a systematic way and even the billing inspectors and bill distributors concerned are being kept in the dark about the target area,” the source said.

He said the aim of conducting surprise raids was to apprehend the violators redhanded, snap their connections and book them.

He said there were hundreds of fake domestic consumers in the city. Similarly, there were numerous commercial consumers who had yet to register their names with the agency, he added.

The sources said those billing inspectors, who had recently been reshuffled for misuse of power, had allegedly spared many commercial consumers from paying charges to the agency on their own.

Meanwhile, a Wasa spokesperson told Dawn that in the last month (July) the civic body had earned Rs13.5 million from the discount and relief packages it extended to illegal connection holders and defaulters.

More than 450 defaulters, she said, had benefited from the relief package during the last month owing to which Wasa earned Rs6.5 million. Similarly, about Rs7 million was collected from more than 352 illegal connection holders after they deposited normal connection acquiring fees with the agency and regularized their respective connections.

Keeping in view the growing number of beneficiaries of both packages, the spokes-erson said, Wasa had extended the deadline for both the packages till September 30, 2003, and had also appealed to the citizens to avail this opportunity.